Audio Signature-Based Condition Monitoring of Internal Combustion Engine Using FFT and Correlation Approach

This work proposes a novel prototype-based engine fault classification scheme employing the audio signature of engines. In this scheme, Fourier transform and correlation methods have been used. Notably, automated audio classification has immense significance in the present times, used in both audio-based content retrieval and audio indexing in multimedia industry. Likewise, it is also becoming increasingly important in automobile industries. It has been observed that real world automobile engine audio data are contaminated with substantial noise and out fliers. Hence, it is challenging to categorize different fault types in different engines. Accordingly, the present paper discusses a methodology where a set of algorithms checks the state of an unknown engine as either healthy or faulty. Fault categorizing algorithm is based on its cross- and autocorrelation coefficient values. Appropriately, in this study, the engine amplitude-frequency values of fast Fourier transform are calculated and subdivided into bands to calculate the correlation coefficient matrix. The correlation coefficient matrix for the unknown engine is then calculated and matched with this “prototype” engine matrix to categorize it into a single or multiple fault(s). It is worth mentioning here that although a rank-based maximum close scheme is adopted for finding the unknown engine´s fault, the work can be extended to any other parametric and neural network-based classification scheme. Keeping this background in mind, the present paper discusses the proposed methodology to find a prototype engine, unknown engine classification, implementation on real audio signal for single cylinder engine data, and its results.